In case the election on February 25, 2023, does not produce a clear winner, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has stated that it is already making measures for a second presidential election in 2023.
Voting officials had planned to produce twice as many ballots as are required for the first round.
This was said by Festus Okoye, INEC's Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, at a roundtable discussion with the heads of the media bureaus on Friday in Abuja. According to him, the commission had to take this action because it might not have had enough time to manufacture ballots immediately following the first election so they would be prepared for the subsequent election.
He said, “This is because the law gives the commission just 21 days within which to engage in reverse logistics and conduct a run-off election in case there’s no winner.”
He also said that, for the governorship election, INEC had made plans to print twice as many ballots for at least four run-off states in case none of the states had a clear winner in the first election.
He said that the law says that to win the presidential election, a candidate must get the most votes and a quarter of the votes in two-thirds of the states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
He said that not all candidates would run in the second election if the first one didn’t have a clear winner.
There will be 18 candidates in the first election, but in the second election, there will only be two.
He said that the two candidates would be the ones who got the most votes in the election, and the second candidate would get the most votes in the most states.